Recipe For An RTOS

May 4, 2009

BitBake from the OpenEmbedded project is central to Monta Vista’s latest Linux real-time operating system (RTOS) and system tool release, Monta Vista Linux 6 (MVL 6). MVL 6 has the latest Linux and Eclipse development system enhancements and bug fixes, but the BitBake build environment is being exposed in this release. BitBake is a system designed to build systems, sort of like a super make facility. In fact, it is designed to work with standard make tools like Ant.

Also, BitBake recipes are designed to create cross-compiled systems. The text-based instructions are used to generate a task tree that determines dependencies, acquires support files, and creates the desired artifacts such as a downloadable flash image for an embedded target.

BitBake is architecture agnostic, so it isn’t just a Linux phenomenon. It is designed for collaborative environments and large projects. Highly extensible and based on Python, the system supports embedded Python code. Furthermore, BitBake is an open-source project hosted by BerliOS. It’s not just found in Monta Vista’s toolbox. It’s used by a number of other companies and open-source projects, including OpenMoko and OpenZaurus.

Monta Vista is using BitBake recipe collections to deliver vertical market versions of its operating system and tool suite such as versions for the cell-phone market or communications market. This enables developers to take advantage of applicable applications and support by customizing the recipe. It also makes it possible for third parties to provide recipes or additions to recipes in a more modular fashion.

BitBake

developer.berlios.de/projects/bitbake

Monta Vista

www.mvista.com

OpenEmbedded

wiki.openembedded.net

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.